Franco-German Energy Transition Week

The objective of this project is to strengthen Franco-German collaboration on energy transition at local level and involve citizens in the process through an awareness-raising campaign.

Project

The ‘Franco-German Energy Transition Week’ project consists of two elements: firstly, Franco-German Energy Transition Week itself, and secondly, a conference on pioneering regions in the energy transition in Germany and France.

The first edition of Franco-German Energy Transition Week will take place at the end of January 2019. Its aim is to set up creative and easy-to-realise awareness-raising activities. A call for ideas, which ended in July, made it possible to select 19 cities and associations that will set up creative Franco-German activities on the energy transition. Their activities will be co-financed through this project. More cities and associations will be encouraged to participate in the Week, and the all activities will be listed on the project’s website.

The conference on pioneering regions in the energy transition in Germany and France took place in Montreuil (Paris) on September 5-6. During the conference, nearly 140 representatives of French and German local authorities, as well as national institutions (such as the BMU), stressed that the challenges of energy and climate transition in the two countries call for increased cooperation at all levels (national, regional, local and the private sector).

Background

Following the Paris Agreement, in which 195 signatory countries committed to limit global warming to below 1.5°C, France and Germany can be driving forces behind international movement. Both Germany and France have set up national programmes to promote energy transition. Many initiatives have brought French and German stakeholders together in the energy transition process, but the first successful specific partnerships at local level were made possible thanks to the TANDEM project, which started in 2014 and is coordinated by two European city networks, Energy Cities and Climate Alliance.

EUKI

The European Climate Initiative (EUKI):

This project is part of the European Climate Initiative (EUKI). EUKI is a project financing instrument by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU). The EUKI competition for project ideas is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. It is the overarching goal of the EUKI to foster climate cooperation within the European Union (EU) in order to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.